The illustrative embodiments described in the present application are useful in systems including those for controlling machines and more particularly are useful in systems including those for providing co-located paper based user interfaces to mailing and shipping systems.
There are several categories of conventional business machines in ubiquitous use today. The typical large office environment may include centralized business machine centers that often include copy machines, facsimile machines, printers, and mailing machines. In a typical small home office environment, business machines are often located in a single office and may include multi-function business machines such as a combined printer/scanner/copier/facsimile unit. Business machines are also found in other environments such as production mail facilities and copy centers.
Systems such as office machines including copiers, facsimile machines and mailing machines often include a user interface that provides a keypad and display. The user interface is utilized to control the functions of the machine and to receive operating parameter input from the operator such as the number of copies to be made or the value of postage desired. Such user interfaces may require the user to navigate through several layers of menus to perform a particular task.
Multi-user settings often utilize business machine usage accounting systems for tracking usage of the business machines according to various criteria. The criteria could include a user identification number, a client identification number and/or a particular matter identification number. Furthermore, a system may require a user to input acceptable account numbers before allowing access to the business machine. The usage accounting systems typically employ a separate accounting processor connected to the business machine having a separate user interface. Several models of mailing machines are available from Pitney Bowes of Stamford, Conn.
Certain business machine systems that utilize operator marked control sheets have been described. For example, a copier with document sensing control is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,248,528 issued Feb. 3, 1981 to Sahay. Additionally, a document control system and method for digital copiers is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,175,714 B1 issued Jan. 16, 2001 to Crean.
A document processing system utilizing document service cards to provide document processing services is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,534,975, issued Jul. 9, 1996 to Stefik, et al. The document service cards are fed to the document processing platform. An apparatus and method for processing a machine readable document with embedded machine instructions is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,974,202 issued Oct. 26, 1999 to Wang, et al.
Many business machines use keypad and display user interfaces and some include accounting processors. Some business machines have been described that read operating instructions from paper. The prior art does not provide a system and method for providing access level capable and/or authenticated paper based user interfaces to machines such as shipping and mailing machines. Additionally, the prior art does not provide for an accounting and/or batching system using a paper based user interface to machines such as shipping and mailing machines.